The Future of GovTech: Calipsa

Edd Elliott

08 September 2017

The Future of GovTech: Calipsa

In ‘The Future of GovTech’ series, we highlight tech startups with the potential to solve public sector challenges and transform the public services we all use. This week, AI camera monitoring with Calipsa

“In cities around the world, you still find human operators seated all day in dark rooms staring at walls of TV screens; they monitor video feeds and look for incidents. It’s tiring, you can’t focus that long — humans just aren’t suited for that job,” explains Mohammad Rashid, founder of Calipsa.

GovStart member Calipsa employs artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to monitor traffic camera feeds. The Deep Learning technology can automatically detect traffic incidents with increasing accuracy, bettering the capability of a human operator by a factor of a hundred.

“There are around 250 million surveillance and traffic cameras worldwide — with more installed daily,” Rashid explains. “It is beyond question that continuing to rely on human operators is not sustainable.”

“However, with the advent of Deep Learning, AI systems can reliably replace the monotonous and boring aspects a human monitoring officer faces.”

Rashid studied Machine Learning at Cambridge University. He met his co-founder Boris Ploix, a former innovator of transport systems in France, at Entrepreneur First, creating Calipsa. The pair now aim to take their company to the UK public sector with the GovStart growth programme.

“Our technology can help understand traffic flows and assist with tackling congestion, analysing air quality levels, providing road enforcement and implementing smart cities — and there are lots of potential further applications beyond transport.”

Join us at the GovTech Summit in Paris, on 12th November 2018 to bring entrepreneurship to the European public sector & transform democratic practices!